The driver of a heavy supply truck from Fort Lewis is the latest local casualty of the war in Iraq. Sgt. Larry R. Bowman, 29, from Granite Falls, N.C., died Friday in Baghdad from wounds suffered when the vehicle he was driving through the desert hit a roadside bomb, Army officials said Monday. Bowman, whose convoy was returning to its Kuwait base, deployed from Fort Lewis in July as a member of the 513th Transportation Company. The unit has about 150 soldiers and is part of the 57th Transportation Battalion, 593rd Corps Support Group. After joining the Army in February 2003, Bowman came to Fort Lewis in October 2005 and was on his first tour of Iraq, said Catherine Caruso, a spokeswoman at the post. The Army will fly Bowman’s body to North Carolina from Dover, Del., this week, his father-in-law, Bob Navarro, told the Charlotte Observer newspaper. A memorial service at Fort Lewis is scheduled for Thursday afternoon. Post officials didn’t release any information about his family status.... http://www.theolympian.com

Police in Ramadi uncovered 17 decomposing corpses buried beneath two schoolyards in a district that until recently was under the control of al-Qaida fighters. At least 85 people were killed or found dead across the country Tuesday. The adult bodies were discovered in the Anbar provincial capital after students and teachers returned to the schools a week ago and noticed an increasingly putrid odor and stray dogs digging in the area, Police Maj. Laith al-Dulaimi said. He said one body had not yet been recovered from a separate burial site behind one of the schools because authorities feared it was booby-trapped with a bomb. Ramadi had been a stronghold of Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida fighters until recently, when the U.S. forces in the region and the Iraqi government successfully negotiated with many local tribal leaders to split them off from the more militant insurgent groups....http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18162972/

Schools in a crime-ridden section of the Jamaican capital closed early and police boosted patrols after gun violence killed two men.One man carrying an AK-47 rifle was shot dead in a gunbattle with police on Tuesday, and a bystander was killed in the crossfire of another gunbattle, police Superintendent Delroy Hewitt said."Things are relatively calm," he said. "However, we are not taking any chances and we have deployed squads to the area in case things get out of hand."Some West Kingston residents disputed that account during street protests, saying the two men were killed in cold blood."I would call it hell on earth because it surrounds the school," said Everton Jones, principal of the Denham Town primary school. "I am used to hearing the gunshots, but I have never experienced this kind of firepower before."...http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-04-17-jamaica-violence_N.htm?csp=34

Archeologists have discovered the remains of two dozen children apparently sacrificed by priests who slashed their throats and offered their blood to the rain god Tlaloc, researchers said on Tuesday. The discovery at a former Toltec settlement indicates that child sacrifice predated the Aztecs, an advanced civilization conquered by the Spanish in the 16th century, and was fairly commonplace. Dating to about 950 to 1150, the bones of the children were found on the outskirts of the Toltec archaeological zone of Tula, said Luis Gamboa, an archaeologist for the National Institute of Anthropology and History. The sacrificed children ranged from age 5 to about 15. "They had some incisions on the vertebrae that suggested they had used some sort of (stone) to cut their throats, not so much to cut off their heads, but rather, it appears, to cut the jugular and bleed them to death," Gamboa said. ...http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=3051026

Shootouts involving drug gangs and police Tuesday left at least 20 alleged gang members dead and sent mourners in a cemetery fleeing from gunfire, officials said. The deaths are the latest in an upsurge of killing that has made Rio de Janeiro one of Brazil's most violence-plagued cities with an annual homicide rate of around 50 per 100,000 residents. Most of the killings have occurred in the city's more than 600 shantytowns, controlled primarily by heavily armed drug gangs. At least 14 alleged drug gang members were killed in an hours-long shootout in the Mineira shantytown near Rio De Janeiro's downtown district, said a police spokeswoman who declined to be identified according to department policy. "We're not finished wrapping up the operation, the number could rise higher still," she said. ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3050961

Battling high winds, 25-foot ice walls, mechanical breakdowns and whiteout conditions, a Canadian military team, including Eskimo reservists, last week completed a 17-day trek designed to sustain Canada's claim to sovereignty over the high Arctic. "One night was so bad our escort planes couldn't land, and we were out of fuel and kerosene," said Maj. Chris Bergeron, 48, who led the expedition. "But they flew over the storm until there was an opening for our resupply." Conditions at times were so poor that it took hours simply to pitch a tent, Maj. Bergeron added. "The last day, it was like someone was trying to stop us from achieving our goal." Canada has always fiercely guarded its sovereignty over its Arctic archipelago the triangle of more than 36,500 islands that reaches from its Arctic coast almost to the North Pole. Some of the islands are no larger than a man could stand on, while others, like Baffin Island, are nearly the size of France....http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20070416-114444-5697r.htm